Back to school SNAFU...

Tuesday began the new school year in our house. Meg headed off to her first day of middle school (7th) and Brandon began his "intermediate years" (4/5) in elementary school. Being the coupon savvy Mom that I am, I was pretty proud of my pre school-year savings at Staples and a variety of other stores. I smirked at the mass of Johnny-come-lately shoppers crowding stores on the Sunday before classes began. I was finished…or so I thought; then came the second day of school!

It is apparently the norm for middle schools and high schools to wait until the first week of classes to send home their "real" list of items. So even though I had been making my penny, nickel and dime purchases since June - I found myself standing in a feeding frenzy of other parents of kids in the higher grades. It was a sea of crazed teenagers and their beleaguered parents…the line at Office Max stretched from the front registers to the back aisles. Visions of November's "Black Friday" went through my mind like a shopping vet having a flash-back.

College rule notebook paper?! Where?! A group to my right launched themselves upon the prize like a pack of hungry wolves.

As I clutched my newly acquired list of items from Meg's literature teacher, I wanted to scream: I'm not like you! I didn't wait until the last moment to shop…I was finished!

Defeated I joined the others searching out a package of spiral bound index cards. I swallowed my anger as I reached for a "tape bound" notebook - thinking of the dozen or so "spiral" notebooks I had bought for a mere penny, but were now substandard. Standing in line, I watched a small group of people snatching up the last of the TI-Scientific calculators - others hovered on the edge trying to sneak a hand in to grab one too. I waited for a knife-fight to break-out, or at least a decent musical number a la West Side Story, but it was finally my turn at the cash register and I lost interest. $11.35 later I was (again) finished. That was probably the same amount that I had spent on all of Brandon's carefully purchased supplies (minus his book bag and binder) - I clenched my teeth in frustrated rage that I had missed out on previous bargains just because Meg's school couldn't be bothered to produce a proper list earlier in the summer. Didn't these people know we were in a recession?

I wandered over to Target next to locate a decent student planner - since Meg had declared the one the school gave out for free to be "lame". She was actually right - they gave the kids only 4 lines per day to list their assignments but they have 7 classes. Apparently Target sends out a siren call to all single fathers that we married folk cannot hear…because every aisle I ventured down had at least one baffled looking man with a bored child in tow. One muttered, "I can't believe there is nothing left." Another whined into his cell phone that they "just didn't make those in that size." I bet he was looking for the mysterious "4.0 oz large glue stick." HA! It was a trick…just buy the biggest one you can find and move on young pup, I wanted to whisper knowingly in his free ear. They just throw them in the communal basket anyhow, you know. I finally located the only style of student planner left and made my way home.

I'm still in disbelief that I had to shop for school supplies on the second day of school. At least I had found what I needed, and despite the fact that my new little list had cost me all of what I had saved previously, I could be content with the knowledge that I was done.

Until the third day of class...